Faith, Love & Other Things
by drinktea
Summary: He doesn't have a choice because love's hold is irrevocable, and its choice is her. He hopes, holds his breath and waits. Post-game AU, Snow/Serah, Noel/Serah.
1. Noel: Hold Your Breath

**A/n:** I wrote this in one night in a fit of inspiration, and it's been sitting on my hard drive since. This is a post-game AU, where after they've saved the timeline, the gang is all together again. There is both Serah/Snow and Serah/Noel in this, though you can definitely guess which pairing is endgame from my previous works. (Hint: it's Serah/Noel.) I'm oddly attached to this piece! I hope you get oddly attached too, and read and review. Haha. So without further ado...

* * *

Love makes you lose all reason, they tell him. It makes no sense, it drives you up the wall. You don't get to choose who you fall in love with, so unpredictable is love's path - love chooses you. It breaks all the rules. It's the ultimate trump card.

But is that what they have, he asks them, then cuts off any chance at a reply- no. All he has to do is be patient, keep his faith in himself and her. Don't hold your breath, they tell him. He does, just to make a point.

He knows she'll see him eventually. He's the one who stays up late with her making lesson plans for her kids, he's the one who visits the class on his days off and paints their faces. He's the one she shops for groceries with, he's the one who carries them in for her. He's the one she tests her confectionaries out on, he's the one who sits in the kitchen sniffing the air as they finish baking. He'll always be there because as cliched as it sounds, she's the one. He doesn't have a choice because love's hold is irrevocable, and its choice is her.

* * *

His doorbell rings at midnight and he rolls out of bed thinking that there's only one person he'd open the door for right now.

It's her.

He lets her in, and she's sniffling. When he asks what happened she just lets the tears slip down her cheeks and he knows who's responsible. When they were traveling together she never shed a tear, but since then he's seen a disconcerting amount of tears fall from her eyes. She only ever cries because of one person. She stands in front of him, crumpling in on herself, eyes scrunching and sobs beginning to escape her mouth.

The neighbours tap the wall warningly and he ignores them. He thinks on his toes - she can't sleep on the couch so she'll take his bed. He leads her by the hand down the hall and into his room, where the bed is still warm. He sits her down on the edge of it and stays beside her as she cries.

He wakes in the morning on the floor with a sore back to the smell of pancakes. She arranges her mouth into a fragile smile over breakfast and talks about her students.

He doesn't say much. Even though it hurts him to see her sad, he hates it that she lets it go so fast - that she forgets the number of tears she's shed.

* * *

She asks him what colour, and he picks pink. He picks pink because it's the colour of her hair. She takes the flower seeds up into her hands and goes to pay. As they walk she tells him that after some pleading, they've set a date, and that it's four months from now. Would he like to be a groomsman?

He tells her he can't. Even though her face falls, he doesn't tell her why. He thinks that the faith he's been keeping all this while has been just a bit too blind. Even though their engagement has lasted for too long, even though he's never around, even though he picks fights, she stays right where she is. Even though _he_ stays up late, shops, bites into desserts with her, she stays right where she is. He never thought it possible, but maybe love has her locked in place just like it has him.

He lies back on the grass beneath the sky and holds his breath.

* * *

He's stopped coming around so much because being around her means sharing her time with florists and caterers and event planners. Though he's tenacious, he's not masochistic.

But he misses her and he misses the brats she somehow handles, so he drops in one afternoon at the school, hoping it's a wedding-free zone. The kids pounce him shamelessly, smearing primary colours on his clothing - they are fingerpainting. He pulls a piece of paper out for himself - he knows where everything is - and dunks each of the fingers of his left hand into a different colour. She watches him, eyes somewhere between affection and caution.

The end of the school day comes and the kids run out lightning fast, leaving them to put the paintings on racks to dry. It's when he reaches around her, sliding paintings in, that he mistakenly puts a hand on her waist.

She pulls away with a short gasp. Her reaction is so immediate that his intuition tells him she is too aware of him, of the space he occupies. He apologizes, eyes downcast, but then she's the one apologizing, insisting that it's nothing and that he has nothing to apologize for. Paper still in her hands, she hugs him like she's saying goodbye. When she pulls back, she gives him a peck on the cheek.

Then the paintings are falling to the floor, and his back is hitting the racks, rustling more artwork out of place, and the peck isn't a peck anymore.

* * *

The string quartet grates on his ears and he bites down hard on his jaw. Their friends toss him looks, knowing how he feels, wondering why he came. He had to come - in title, he's her best friend. How would it look if he didn't come? Maybe he is a masochist. He sits along the aisle and next to her sister, folding and refolding the program in his hands.

The scene is set perfectly. The weather is sunny, breezy, and flowers decorate nearly every possible surface. There's a blinding white arch and beneath it stands her groom, waiting. They all wait.

The music shifts and he doesn't want to look, he shouldn't look- but he does, and she's beautiful. Her skin is flawless and her hair is elegantly coiled at the back of her head. She walks forward with measured steps up the aisle, steady, a bouquet in her hands. Her gaze doesn't waver, she doesn't see him. The ceremony begins, and their mouths are moving but he can't hear a thing.

He wonders what they could have had. He thinks back on what happened in the schoolhouse, savouring the memory of her lips against his. He doesn't know how to stop loving her. He doesn't think he can. And how could they have done what they had done without her loving him, too? In a flash, he knows what he has to do.

Before he knows it he's standing, and he shouts her name, "Serah!"

Everyone turns to him, staring open-mouthed, murmuring amongst themselves. Her groom's eyes flash wickedly at him, his mouth pressed into a hard, thin line.

He doesn't care. The only person not looking at him is her. He steps into the aisle. He waits for her to yell at him, to tell him he's a lovestruck fool and to leave and to not come back.

She doesn't. She slowly raises her head to face him. Tears have pooled in her eyes and are running down her cheeks, ruining her makeup and falling to stain the bouquet she holds.

He feels his heart slow and everyone around them fade away. "Serah," he says. He feels, _he knows_ what she has to do now. He holds his breath.

And then she smiles.


	2. Snow: Should've Seen It

**A/n: **And here we have part two, the final part, from Snow's perspective. I've never focused so much on him before, so I hope he didn't come out too wonky. As always, thank you for reading and for leaving your thoughts.

* * *

The first inkling comes to him too late.

He should have seen it sooner, should have paid more attention to her - to _them_. Maybe it's justice - that he's learning it the hard way now.

When he finally came back from his travels along the timeline, when she and _he _had saved the world and let him return - that's when he first saw them. They were so close, she on the right edge of her seat and he on the left of his. He was drawing something on a napkin and she leant over to see, her hair brushing his arm.

Confident as ever though, he stepped up between them, landed a hand on each of their shoulders. "Whatcha got there?" he asked, not actually interested, just wanting to surprise her.

He should have seen it sooner. She should have known his voice. She jumped at his touch, whirling, with fright in her eyes. And then when their gazes connected her eyes flickered. At the time all he saw was her smile, growing slowly on her face. She hugged him tight. He remembered how good it felt to have her in his arms, so he was quick to wrap his around her too. Maybe, if he'd lifted his eyes, he would have seen the other man gaze at her sadly, would have caught the scent of longing.

But he didn't, and so he didn't.

* * *

He should have seen it sooner. She made desserts weekly, filling her apartment with the smells of baking. He doesn't like sweets, so he never ate one in spite of her constant offers. She iced her cupcakes - always - with a deep blue. In hindsight, he can see that it was the exact shade of the other man's eyes.

He doesn't know when she stopped offering him a taste of whatever she had made, but he's sure it had gone on too long anyway. He rebuffed her with annoyance on more than one occasion.

If he was her, he would've stopped sooner.

* * *

He moved in with her. He had been back for months. Months in her presence, months of her voice and her nice-smelling hair and her kisses. He should have seen it sooner - those kisses slowly decreased over those months, her jaw clenched tighter and tighter. Her patience wore thinner and thinner - when were they getting married? When would he stop patrolling areas for days at a time, when would he stop moving so much?

But he was wrapped up in himself as he always is, and he didn't read the danger in what she was saying. He wrote it off as a mystery of the female mind, as a rush to get married, to tie him down. He snapped back at her more than once, and she always left, slamming the door hard enough to let him know she was gone. He thinks, uncharitably, that it was probably straight into the other man's willing arms. He never once saw her cry, but _he _probably saw it plenty.

That's sign enough of who she trusted more.

* * *

When he picked a date, it was with the intention of seeing her smile again. He approached her as she picked out a recipe for the weekend, stooped over a book he had seen before - he didn't know where she kept it. It was full of cookies and cakes and pies, so he forgot about it.

He wanted to be theatrical. He asked if four months was okay. She asked what for. He said to plan a wedding.

Her gaze fell briefly. And then she lifted her eyes to him and said yes. He smiled to himself. Mission accomplished.

He should have seen it sooner - instead of calling everyone or looking at wedding dresses or running over to him and kissing him full on the lips, she sat, and continued to pick out a cupcake recipe.

* * *

The first inkling comes to him too late. It comes to him tonight, two weeks before their wedding. She comes home from the schoolhouse. He doesn't even know if this is late for her, so little is he around. She is standing at the sink, fingers to her lips. He approaches her from behind and wraps his arms around her.

She stiffens. She breaks free from him. Her eyes are glazed over and distracted.

It is as she retreats that he catches sight of something - a fresh red mark at her neck, marring her otherwise flawless skin. He knows what it is. He couldn't have given it to her himself - he hasn't touched her in days. When she ignores the other man's calls, that's when she confirms it for him - who she was with.

But that night, as they lie in bed together, he hopes beyond hope that he can fix this, what he's done to her. He snakes out an arm to her. She accepts it, twining her fingers with his.

For whatever reason, she keeps on pretending. And a piece of her - even if it's not her heart - is better than nothing at all, so he keeps on pretending too.

* * *

She floats down the aisle to him, a vision in white. Her face, devoid of emotion, only reminds him of what a bastard he is - that he is willing to do this just to keep her, and in doing so break her heart.

Her true love sits as a guest on her side of the aisle. He should have seen it sooner. He's a self-absorbed fool - the adulation the other man regards her with, sad as it is, spells it out for him. He's probably loved her as long as he's known her.

So when Noel interrupts the ceremony, cutting off the sound of the violins and the droning of the minister, Snow can only clench his jaw, swallow nothing, and let out a shaky breath.

Noel steps into the aisle. "Serah," he says.

She turns to the other man and smiles. Her smile could shame the sun.

Snow closes his eyes.

It's over, now. It's been over for too long.

He should have seen it sooner.


End file.
